What is your Quest?
The biggest news today of course is the release of the Quest System which has sparked fires all around Gaia. The basics first...
The Quest System currently features one Quest: The New User Quest which old users are allowed to take because it would be the biggest rip-off ever if they couldn't.
So they did, and they annihilated the Welcome to Gaia forum until we funneled them into their own thread (which annihilated the forums altogether because, apparently, you DON'T want 12,000 users all posting in the same thread in a 3 hour period. Who could have possibly known?)
Anyway, the general reception of the Quest System was good, bugs aside (which were in large part due to unforeseen database pummeling), until it came to the topic of old Monthly Collectibles (MCs).
Gaian Civil War
Now that the Quest System is a reality and Phase Two is coming up, users are asking the question: should Monthly Collectibles be available through the Quest System?
On the one hand you have the Oldbies who feel that MC's are a badge of their longevity; the rich Gaians who feel that their tremendous investment entitles them to exclusivity for all time; and the elitists who feel that people shouldn't be allowed a different way to work hard for MC's (for some reason).
On the other hand you have the Gaians who are sick of the unattainability of MCs, who were too young to buy them when they came out, or who can't spend $2.50 for a small cluster of carefully organized pixels.
What I say right now is... I don't care! We haven't even started Phase Two yet, so no REAL decisions have been made regarding this issue.
We're going to make the decision that we think will be the most fun for the most users and have the best long-term effect on Gaia.
It's Not My Fault!
It's these guys' faults too! I wasn't the only who worked on the Quest System, and if you liked it, all of these people deserve your praise:
Darknrgy (Team lead)
Ariesboy571 (Dev)
coaster_vn (Dev)
brunosmad (UI Designer)
Cashmere Cactus (Quest text / announcement)
Saka (New User Quest Artwork)
CP (Quest Icon and UI artwork)
72squared (QA, advice, auditing)
The QA team for testing
The Mod team for testing and advice
Everyone else at Gaia who contributed ideas, advice, or support
Round of applause!
2 Months for this Piece of Crap?!
Contrary to what some may think, Quest System is a sophisticated little chunk of software. It allows us to make quests out of any action on the site and any future actions we ever choose to support. Not too shabby! If you can dream it, it can be made into a quest now.
I started a thread with answers to common questions about Quests here
Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
Another cool thing that happened this week was the release of the new DIs MCs.
Personally, I think Momo is too cute and will be wearing him as soon as my donation letter arrives.
The spaceship has had a lukewarm reception, but I think Gaians are just underestimating the potential of that alien technology ninja
Gaian Complaint #23982993417: Fixes, not Features!
There's a common complaint I see around Site Feedback and GCD that goes something like this:
Joe User
The devs should stop making new features and events and stuff, and spend more time fixing the site! EVERYTHING's broken ALL the time!
I have a couple things to say about this:
(A) If EVERYTHING was broken ALL the time, you wouldn't have been able to post your complaint rofl
(B) We can do both. The people who write and draw and run NPCs for the site aren't always the people who can code and fix bugs on the site.
(C) We're spending a couple of months working on a bug-fixing cycle - overhauling some old features, fixing bugs in others, and working on just a small set of new things.
We're not stupid (though sometimes it seems otherwise) and we know the site can't continue to grow if it keeps breaking. It's just a bad idea. But the scope of Gaia and the amount of old code makes it difficult to catch everything.
And as soon as we think we've got it down, another 10,000 users log on at the same time and prove us wrong.
So long story short: Yeah. We know. We're trying. We have a great team now and we're all getting better and better at what we do. I know most of you complain because you want Gaia to be all it can be -- but so do we (it's just that when we complain, it usually means a lot more work!)
OLD NEWS: The funniest thing I've seen all week
for all the hard work
to the entire team who pulled this off. Ignore the 
whining about a release of MCs. You guys get to decide, and as long as the difficulty is commesurate with the age of the item, 
Best idea I saw was a one year delay between Envelope Opening and Quest Reward 
Community Member